Insights & Solutions

Learn about: how innovative design can be achieved at the same or similar cost, how design can result in a well-regarded community landmark, and how community-based care improves patient use and compliance with regimens.

“So, what is population health, anyway?” is a question I hear often—and the answers that follow really run the gamut. There is already a wide range of interpretations of what population health really means, and how it plays out in the real world.

This Ambulatory Care Center Design Tool (ACCDT), developed by Dr. Anjali Joseph and Dr. Zahra Zamani from Clemson University in collaboration with The Center for Health Design (CHD), builds upon a series of papers, best practice case studies and in-depth literature reviews conducted by CHD as well as CHD's Clinic Design Post-Occupancy Evaluation Toolkit – Tool 2 Audit of Physical Environment with additions from a thesis by Crews (2013). The tool supports design teams in making key design decisions about ambulatory care centers linked to evidence based design goals and principles.

As the Children’s Hospital at the Anschutz Medical Campus in Colorado has recently discovered, being a technologically advanced facility doesn’t mean you have to take a high-tech approach to your design elements. In fact, just the opposite is true at this pediatric hospital, where the most important goal is creating a nurturing environment that can help young patients to heal so they can go home faster.